Cyber-crime is costing governments, private corporations and public agencies billions of dollars a year. Extremely sophisticated and creative hackers are developing unique ways around firewalls, encryption, anti-virus and other data protection technologies. Today, a cybersecurity expert is a critical part of your management team. Below is a brief discussion of some of the challenges of document protection and the most commonly utilized responses.

Information Management and Securing Documents

Paper-based document management systems are a nightmare. They are open to security breaches, are inefficient, time-consuming and vulnerable to loss, theft, misfiling and mismanagement. Sophisticated digital database systems streamline operations and secure your documents on safe servers capable of immense backup capabilities. Now the challenge is how to store and protect critical data, such as population registry, birth and death certificates, and immigration documents – considering the reality that various people are interacting on a daily basis with the database system.

The first step is to set up controls that limit the personnel who can read, delete, access, view or alter data. Requiring biometric-based access cards, facial recognition, fingerprints or retinal scans to enter buildings, internal offices where sensitive data is stored, and the database system itself or even the servers room is an important step. Digitized or biometric access cards can also record employees’ database activities, i.e. what files are being opened, modified, copied, extracted, etc., by whom and at what time.

All of these measures will protect you from internal threats. But there are external threats as well. In fact, the more advanced the data storage system, the more attractive it becomes to cyber-criminals looking to hack in to steal and exploit documents and identification data. Cyber-security companies can assist with establishing a series of security measures to protect you from external threats such as malware, phishing, and other cybercrime tools used to steal data from within computer systems.

Passport Control and Securing Borders

Fortunately, the international community has developed a number of highly sophisticated technologies that make the passport more tamper-proof. These same technologies can be applied to other identification cards, such as driver’s licenses or national ID cards. The international standard today is biometric, including such features as embedded chips, watermarks, holograms, digital photos, special materials and inks, and barcodes.

In today’s fast-paced world, one solution is not enough. Cyber-security experts can design individualized data protection strategies that are flexible enough and specially customized to keep up with the ever creative minds of cyber criminals.